A general district-energy planning method that is suitable for hot summer and cold winter areas is proposed in this paper based on an energy bus system (EBS). In the proposed method

multiple thermal or cooling sources and users (buildings) are connected together using warm and cool lines with distributed variable speed pumps (DVSPs). In the new EBS configuration

thermal devices are used to control the water supply temperature in the side of all sources

chillers and heat pumps installed in all users (buildings) are used to provide space cooling

heating

and domestic hot water. Because of the simultaneously decoupled thermal features of the presented EBS configuration

both energy sources and users are capable of adjusting their thermal devices flexibly according to their own local loads. To demonstrate the new district energy planning method

a hydraulic and thermal model is developed

and a case study is illustrated in detail. The results show that combined with the ground source heat pump

water source heat pump

and steam-driven LiBr units

the given method has good efficiency in utilizing low-grade energy resources

with an integrated COP of 3.85 in the summer and 3.17 in the winter.